Bereaved Isle of Wight families are having to endure a long wait while the death of their loved one is investigated.
The Island has one of the highest average times to process an inquest, the Ministry of Justice has said, leading to questions about the coroner’s service.
Families are waiting, on average, 63 weeks for an inquest – more than double the average across England and Wales
A Freedom of Information request was recently sent to the Isle of Wight Coroner, Caroline Sumeray, through the BBC Local Democracy Reporting scheme, requesting information about the number of closed and open inquests between 2018 and 2023.
However, it was made clear by Mrs Sumeray that the coroner is not a public authority so she was not required to supply the information and would not do so.
There are some publicly available figures from the Ministry of Justice which shed light on the coroner’s service on the Isle of Wight, but only up until 2022.
There were fewer reported deaths on the Island in 2022 (747) than 2021 (769) and fewer inquests opened as a result.
However, fewer inquest conclusions were issued in 2022 (105), compared to 196 in 2021 — which is a 46 per cent decrease.
At the end of 2022, 264 inquests were still open, leaving families waiting for the hearing, compared to 188 in 2021, 195 in 2020 and 107 in 2019.
In 2022, a total of 36 inquests were still ongoing two years after the procedures were opened — more than double those in 2021 (15) and a considerable increase on six in 2020 and one in 2019.
The MOJ has said there is still a backlog of cases that have built up because of the Covid pandemic.
In 2022, Section 9C inquests were introduced which allowed some proceedings — that are straightforward and uncontentious — to be held in writing.
In that year, 71 inquests were concluded or adjourned more than a year after they were started, compared to 95 in 2021.
Overall, the average time it took the Isle of Wight Coroner to conclude an inquest in 2022 was 63 weeks. This compares to the average across England and Wales of 30 weeks.
It is the second year in a row that the average time to conclude an inquest surpassed a year, with figures from 2021 showing it took 56 weeks.
In 2020 that figure was 40 weeks and in 2019 it was 35 weeks.
Of the conclusions drawn in 2022: nine were determined to be suicides; two were due to road traffic collisions; 43 misadventure deaths and 12 natural causes.
The questions the coroner declined to answer were: –
- How many inquests have been closed – excluding Section 9C inquests – by the Isle of Wight Coroner in the following years: 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022 and 2023
- How many Section 9C inquests have been closed by the Isle of Wight Coroner in 2022 and 2023.
- As of Wednesday, January 17, 2024, how many open inquests does the Isle of Wight Coroner currently have? Of those how many of the deaths are: one year old, two years old, three years old, four years old, five years old and more.
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